Claire Williams: How rude that people keep asking me when I'll get pregnant

Ahead of the Silverstone British Grand Prix, new deputy team principal Claire
Williams – one of the most senior women in Formula One – tells Louisa
Peacock about her turnaround plans for Williams, why women should be "ballsy"
if they want to work in F1 and how she wishes people would stop asking her
when she will become pregnant.

Heir apparent: Claire Williams is in line to take over as head of Williams after her father promoted her to deputy team principalPhoto: ACTION IMAGES

Ahead of the British Grand Prix this weekend, Claire Williams has an open invitation. To any young girls or women thinking that they'd love to work in Formula One, who watch the drama and excitement of the race on television and dream about being there in reality, the deputy team principal wants to hear from you. "There's no reason why women cannot come into Formula One; there's nothing stopping young girls coming in, as drivers, as technicians – send your CV in."

The newly appointed heir apparent of Williams F1 is adamant that under her leadership, the male-dominated motorsport will become fully open and attractive to girls as it is boys.

"Traditionally roles in F1 have been regarded as quite 'male'. A lot of industries are regarded as male-dominated – jobs for the boys – but as society has developed and progressed, women think they can do jobs that men can do and quite rightly so.

"We at Williams have a skills shortage so if girls are coming up to the right level why on earth wouldn't we recruit from the pool where 50pc of society is female?"

Her optimistic comments are, refreshingly, the complete antithesis of Sir Stirling Moss' outburst earlier this year. The British racing legend provoked outrage by suggesting women are not mentally tough enough to compete in F1.

Sir Stirling Moss: The stress of top-level racing would be “difficult for a lady to deal with in a practical fashion”.

"That was a different generation, he's going to have different views," says Claire, although she thinks a lot of what Sir Stirling said was "taken out of context". Regardless, she adds: "I would like to think that women would be ballsy enough to go, 'actually, I'm going to prove you wrong'. Look at if from a different perspective, rather than saying, 'well, if Stirling Moss says that, we can't do it'. In this day and age I think more and more women are coming and saying, 'I can do this, thanks very much'."

The 36 year-old adds: "I'm at the top, this proves you can do it, there aren't any barriers to entry. It's about the barriers women, I wouldn't say they put it on themselves, but it's about women changing their mindset. People ask me, 'do you come up against any oppositions, how do the men treat me?' They don't treat me any differently because of my gender."

At least, most of the time, she isn't treated any differently. When she first took the promotion at Williams, Claire found herself fighting off regular questions from people in the industry about settling down and getting pregnant. "I'm only 36. People keep asking me, 'are you going to get pregnant?' How rude.

"I want to have children one day, but at the moment, I want to sort Williams out. This is my focus at the moment; if I want children, I want to give them 100pc of my time. And at the moment I want to give Williams 100pc of my time; it's the choice you make in life. I've got time [to have children]."

'Love and marriage'

Claire admits that when she was a little girl, her outlook on life - and work - was very different. "When I was younger I didn't have 'career objectives'. I went to an all-catholic boarding school, I either spent my time praying that an angel wouldn't come down and tell me I needed to be a nun, or, I was just going to get married and have children, that's what was expected."

But now, Claire is determined to give F1 and Williams her full, undivided attention. She is in a serious relationship – and makes no secret of the fact she wants to get married (when I make a mistake and start a question with the words, 'you are married', she interrupts abruptly and laughs, 'no I'm not') - but children are not yet on the agenda.

In any case, a man who had just been promoted into an equivalent role in Formula One would never be asked about when he was taking time out to have kids.

Claire assures me she is 100pc committed to her new job. The more cynical among us would argue Claire's path to the top has been easier to navigate than most, given her father owns the company. But she, more than most at the family-run business, has had to prove her dedication and skill over the years.

Sir Frank was famously once opposed to his daughter even joining his company. When someone in the marketing department offered Claire a job over a decade ago, after she'd been working in the press office at Silverstone, Sir Frank put a stop to it, saying "no way". She was always told that Williams would never be a career option for her, that she would have to find her own way in life.

When she was eventually recruited to Williams for her experience and skill, she would work for another 10 years – "tirelessly" according to Sir Frank – before getting a sniff at the top job.

"When I first joined I worked super hard proving to people I can do the job. It's always at the back of my mind, Frank's got huge shoes to fill," she says. "I'm not going to be the person that lets this team down, because at the end of the day, I'd be letting my dad down."

The formal announcement of Claire's promotion came in March this year. It was delayed by the recent death of her mother Virginia, Sir Frank's wife and confidante of 38 years. She died after a lengthy battle against breast cancer at the age of 66.

The Williams legacy

Claire is assured that she had talked about her potential promotion with her mother before she passed away. "When I was asked to take on the deputy team principal role, I was terrified about asking my mum to get her permission. I was really nervous, it's as much about asking her as it is dad. She's always been the judge and if she was in any way concerned or worried, or said, 'no way, you're not good enough', I wouldn't have done it.

"She said, though, it was great and she wanted me to do it. That's part of the legacy. Williams is who we are, it's our family. It's important to carry that on and make sure that the legacy remains into the next generation."

She believes Williams is "climbing out of the trough" and while it is fine to celebrate the past, she is keen to look to the future. "We've won world championships before, I don't see why we can't again. I never look at it as daunting, it's really exciting. To be able to make a difference, to do your best, to turn this around: I think we can do it, there's no reason why we can't."

Williams’s travails are self-evident as they chase their avowed ambition to win a first world championship since 1997 by 2016. They entered the 2013 season with high expectations but the Renault-powered FW35 is, according to the official F1 website, a "huge disappointment"and both Pastor Maldonado(pictured)and rookie team mate Valtteri Bottas spent the early season racing outside of the points places.

Still, Claire, a politics graduate from Newcastle university, remains optimistic and defiant that Williams will be back on top one day. Part of her turnaround plan includes making sure Williams has the right skills and people for the future – both on the grid and behind the scenes.

She talks about how important it is for Williams to continue to visit schools and spread the word about the careers on offer in F1, to attract the brightest engineering minds to the company. "Rather than just sitting here and expecting people to come to us, and choose motorsport at the end of their engineering degree, we're going out and being proactive, getting to know university offices, careers fairs. There is a skills shortage, there always is, in F1 we're really competitive, we're always trying to find the people who are best in their industry.

"We don't want brain drains to other countries, we want to keep people with engineering degrees in our country, we don't want them going elsewhere, that's important in F1."

Part of the solution, as she sees it, is to attract more girls to motorsport. Not just technicians and behind-the-scenes staff, but drivers, too. There are no rules saying women cannot compete on a Formula One grid.Susie Wolff (pictured), a test driver for Williams,has taken the last step on the ladder before racing in F1 itself – and Claire is confident it won't be long before she makes it the whole way.

"Susie is very ambitious. She has a clear objective and that is to one day line up on an F1 grid. We absolutely will get a woman on the grid," she says robustly.

Williams is toying with the idea of creating a training scheme targeted at girls, such as a female apprenticeship or female technicians scheme, using Susie as a figurehead. "We don't want to segregate; it's about fairness and talent, rather than gender," she adds quickly, but says it could be helpful to have a programme targeted at girls.

Returning to our earlier conversation, I ask her to try and drill down why more girls don't currently go into F1. She pauses and says: "There's still perceptions around it being a job for the blokes. It is what it is. Maybe it's a personal choice – I'm not saying I've got the answers, it's a big question. But motorsport as a whole has been seen as quite male-dominated.

"We have a female development driver [Susie Wolff] and girls are working across different disciplines in the company. We're keen to get those messages out – come and work in motorsport, come in, it's a brilliant environment."